


Reflections on Being Bedded, by Alistair Theirin

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alistair POV, Alistair is nervous and insecure, Angst, Character Study, Cousland warden, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Happy Ending, Intentional Bad Grammar, Jehanne Cousland, Light Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex is a problem for a bastard who probably won’t get to have any. Love? Even worse, and much more confusing. Alistair Theirin can’t quite put anything into words, but he might be in love, and it’s not exactly a good thing at a time like this. Fluff/angst, light smut, character study. Repost from Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections on Being Bedded, by Alistair Theirin

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of my very first Dragon Age fanfics. I went into DA:O with almost no video game experience, and by the end of the first chapter I was completely invested and starting to yell at the TV, so fanfic was inevitable. The character of Alistair really intrigued me, since he's such a mess, and after the first-night sequence I knew I had to expand on what he was thinking and going through. It's a topic that a lot of other folks have already covered, and trying to follow Alistair's thought process led to some truly convoluted grammar and a wince-worthy number of parentheses and em-dashes, but it was still fun to explore. Enjoy!

He isn’t entirely sure how it happened, and maybe he doesn’t want to know. It seems better this way—inevitable, like the Maker himself had a hand in it. Destiny bringing all the pieces together.

(Although given what he was taught at the Chantry, the Maker was not supposed to approve of, ahem, certain things. That’s a level of theology Alistair never explored, though, and he isn’t sure he wants to.)

Destiny, or the Maker, certainly seems the best explanation for how any of them are still alive. (Albeit with a helping hand from Bodahn Feddic and his questionably-sourced goods.) They've all been battered nearly to pieces. Night around the campfire means cleaning wounds, massaging stiffened joints, repairing armor, washing—when there’s a water source nearby, which isn’t often enough, and if he lives for a hundred years Alistair will never forget the smell of Oghren’s undershirts—and talking, if they have the energy.

He remembers that it began so calmly … well, for a world staring down another Blight, anyway. He went to Ostagar with the new recruits and waited, knowing Duncan would be dragging one or two final stragglers with him. A messenger pigeon soon brought word that Duncan had acquired—of all things—a Cousland of Highever, a family well-known for breeding fine, intelligent mabaris and grumpy, half-feral people. A good find, in Alistair’s opinion, though a pyromaniac Dalish with leprosy would have been welcomed by the Wardens right then.

When he looks back on it, his first impression of her had not been of a Cousland. In fact, he’d actually forgotten Duncan was supposed to bring one. (In his defense, riding herd on a handful of nervous, un-Joined Wardens _and_ trying to survive on the scanty rations provided had been taking all his energy. The quartermasters responsible for provisioning the Wardens had apparently not been told how much they could eat.)

She had walked like someone who knew how to wear armor, and that told in her favor. Beyond that, he had a vague impression of curiously wide eyes and countryish looks: pretty, but not beautiful, with sweaty hair pulled back out of her eyes and the haggard look of someone not quite used to traveling through war-torn countryside at speed. Cleaned up, she might have been one of the Redcliffe Castle maids. He could easily imagine her pulling her villager little brother aside and telling him not to talk to that Alistair boy.

But Ostagar fell. Duncan died. Alistair followed her after that because he’s not a leader by nature, and he follows her now because he believes … what?

And because he loves her. That wasn’t supposed to happen. At all.

It came onto him so gradually, though. First he saw, and approved of, how she treated the people they met in Lothering. (Though Sten, perhaps, was a mistake. Alistair doesn’t talk to Sten much. They have nothing to say to each other, and Alistair’s few attempts at friendly banter are usually cut short by either an invocation of the Qun or a stare that could etch granite.) Highever is—was?—a working estate, and maybe people who rule in places like that grow up a little more practical about how to get along with other people.

But she’s not good at _not_ being kind. He approves of kindness, but he also knows that giving gold to one beggar is a guaranteed way to acquire a string of fifteen more. How the Couslands weren’t robbed blind, he doesn’t know. Perhaps they were. (He isn’t going to ask her, because “Hey, what was your family like before they were brutally murdered?” isn’t the way to win friends.)

But she smiles at people she doesn’t know, a bit crooked like she can’t remember how to do it right, and she carries the Cousland family shield despite the dozen better ones they’ve found all across Ferelden by now, and he falls in love with her a little bit every day until the realization crashes onto him and he lies awake in his tent at night, wondering what in the Maker’s name is happening to him.

He’s never been in love. As a child, he nurtured fleeting fondnesses for village girls or those Redcliffe maids—fondnesses usually crushed when, once again, his bastardry jumped out like an angry cat clawing its way out of a sack.

(Lessons learned: don’t fall for maids, and don’t try to catch himself a pet in someone else’s barn. Ow.)

But is this the same kind of thing? He doesn’t know. He certainly can’t idolize her the way he briefly idolized those girls. He’d never seen Nettanya Thatcher or Jana Wilde heaving their guts out from bad air in the mines.

But she is, in her way, pretty. Alistair looks at her sometimes and thinks of a half-forged sword cooled too fast: shining and brittle. Behind the smile and the kindness to beggars who are definitely not all genuine and the delighted laugh when she discovers a useful trinket in the rubble is something hard and ugly, lumpen and ingrown like scar tissue made of rage and twisting her guts into a knot she can’t untangle.

He sees it in the way she clutches the Cousland shield–Maker help you if you try to pick it up, even for cleaning. The way she can’t share a tent with anyone, and always sleeps with her back to a wall whenever possible. The way she caved in the skull of a bandit who tried to lay hands on her dog. 

(In his own head, he actually tells her these things. His tongue would crawl down his own throat and throttle him out of sheer embarrassment if he actually tried to say it out loud, but inside his thoughts he looks at her and wonders what will happen if she loses the second family she’s made out of them.)

Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise him that she chose to rescue Sten from that cage. Perhaps she recognizes something damaged and ugly in Sten that she recognizes in herself. Or perhaps she simply was being nice again. Who can tell? Not Alistair, the proverbially useless.

(His thoughts echo a certain witch of the wilds: _We have a dog, and Alistair is still the dumbest one in the party._ The scolding voices in the back of his head, the ones reminding him of all the times he’s made stupid mistakes, have come to resemble Morrigan’s of late. Maybe it’s because of the voodoo doll the woman is toting around lately … the one with the little Templar shield and suspicious blonde hair. _)_

But his own sorrow and rage are ugly enough to understand a thing like hers, just a little, and oh Maker, he thinks he does love this stray Cousland. 

Some nights he closes his eyes and imagines another world, a world where he is really a king’s son—a younger son, of course, because even in his imagination he wouldn’t unseat Cailan—and there’s no Blight or backstabbing arl to take her away from Highever. He imagines arriving on a royal progress of some kind, or maybe a hunting party, or whatever it is kings’ actual non-accidental sons do, and seeing her blush when he offers her his arm. Gallantly, of course, because he’d be able to that in that other world, and won’t accidentally step on her foot the way he keeps doing when they’re putting up the tents. In that world, he would have something to offer her. In that world, she might fall in love with him, because he could be the gallant knight she deserves.

But if he isn’t losing his mind, she seems to like him in _this_ world … A little, perhaps? She tells him he’s handsome, once, and he blushes and stammers like an idiot and she laughs and lays a hand on his arm and Maker sod it all he wishes he wasn’t wearing the bracers that keep him from feeling that touch. Morrigan sees it, of course, and laughs at him in her sly way. (He thinks up six very clever ways to respond—long afterwards.)

They journey onward, from Lothering to the Brecilian Forest, from the forest clear across the map to Orzammar, and as the country grows wilder they hear that Lothering has fallen. The group grows, because their leader collects other brittle-blade people like honey collects flies. (Not a romantic image. Good thing he’s keeping his mouth shut.) She smiles at him more often, and his heart hammers so hard that he’s suddenly glad the armor is keeping the uncooperative mess of an organ in his chest.

He has a dream, one night. The kind of dream the Chantry was very, _very_ clear about not having. Ever. He wakes, paralyzed with uncertainty and a kind of nameless dread mixed with some very much more … primal … emotions. The few moments spent crawling out of his tent to the spring on the far side of the camp are the most awkward of his life.

Of course, he knows about sex. Redcliffe, too, is a working estate, and even if he hadn’t had the graphic fact of his own conception hanging over his head, he’s seen where cows and dogs come from. His childhood observations in the stables led him to conclude that it wasn’t much fun for animals at all, which was a peculiarly cheerful thought: if his royal father had been willing to go through that weird unpleasantness with his mother, then he really must have loved her.

He cherished that idea until one of the more sympathetic castle guards, perhaps thinking he was doing the perpetually bewildered boy a kindness, took it upon himself to explain how humans managed it. Even if Alistair weren’t awkward with women, the memory of having his own existence reduced to three minutes of extramarital fucking is going to linger a long, long time.

Templars, of course, are expected to be celibate. Grey Wardens are more likely to misbehave—er, so to speak—but don’t usually sire children or have families, partially because of the Taint and partially because nobody can put up with them that long. At Weisshaupt, prostitutes figure sometimes in barracks conversation. Drinking and gambling are more common forms of distraction.

His brittle Cousland invites him to her tent once, in the Brecilian Forest. He stammers (as usual, sod it) and manages to say something about being raised not to take such a thing lightly. Later, when his own guts are being twisted up in knots by his dreams and there are not enough holy thoughts or cold water in the damned _world_ , he simultaneously curses himself for refusing and blesses himself for not taking up an offer she obviously didn’t mean.

Making camp becomes a form of torture. No, that’s not quite right. Alistair’s never been tortured, but he’s been beaten within an inch of his life—most recently two days ago, courtesy of a Hurlock Alpha who got several lucky shots in with a really unnecessarily spiky mace—and this isn’t anything like it. It’s more … subtle. Lingering. Awkward.

In camp he watches her, when he thinks he can get away with it. Sees her coming back from washing, hair wet and loose to dry in soft waves rather than pulled back in its usual braids. Sees her training with Oghren (the drunken dwarf is knotted up inside, just like she is, and so his sweet-smiling Cousland lady learns to Berserk), stripped down to breeches and undershirt (naked is traditional, Oghren says with a grin, but even among Berserkers most prefer not to practice with exposed wedding tackle) as she clashes the Cousland shield against the dwarf’s warhammer and screams out the ugly rage that’s eating her inside, and his heart aches and his dreams grow ever more vivid.

He tries to flirt—sort of? He just says he’s at her service, really, and he is, they all are, so shut your nonexistent mouth, thought-that-sounds-like-Morrigan—and alternately asks the Maker to either wipe the dreams away or make them real. (The latter’s obviously a lost cause, but he’s always been a lost cause too, and if he can’t side with other lost causes, who can?)

After dredging up every ounce of nerve he has, he gives her a rose he found in Lothering. More stammering, because some things are just destined to happen, but he somehow manages to say what he means when he puts it into her hand. About beauty in the middle of ruin, and how much she’s coming to mean to him. She blushes—even in the firelight, he can tell—and says—

She says softly that she feels the same way about him.

Maker preserve him, but the world looks beautiful for a while.

He makes a request. It’s silly, but she collects stray Qunaris and assassins and whatever in the Maker’s name Shale is; if anyone’ll understand him wanting to help the sister he’s never met, it’ll be her. She promises, and before he knows it, he kisses her.

Did he say beautiful? He means wonderful. Magnificent. Glorious. Amazing. Fantastic. He’s running out of synonyms.

Embracing a woman in awkward bulky armor, still lightly flecked with dried blood and smelling of sweat and dirt and the strange herbs that go into their healing salves, barely able to feel anything but the lightest brush of her lips on his… Why didn’t anyone ever tell him it’s the best thing on the Maker’s green earth? Why don’t all women wear dwarven chainmail?

There are a few blushing glances between them, the next day. It seems impossible, and really, it is. The world seems determined to punish them: they crawl back to camp barely breathing that night.

A Sloth demon. A _Sloth demon._ He can’t even believe it when he says it out loud, but the bruises and bandages are pretty much proof.

Her eyes are haunted when she comes to sit by him that evening, but she smiles and says only that the Fade was not pleasant for her and she’d prefer to think about things that are. It wasn’t much fun for him, either, but at least his memories of it seem to fade quickly. He dares to put his arm around her, and she laughs and leans into his side.

The Circle mages send Morrigan back into the Fade alone. Connor and Isolde are saved. Isolde begs them to find Andraste’s ashes, and his leader accepts the task. It feels like a weight off Alistair’s shoulders.

They laugh and joke at the campfire that night. He may have mentioned a few of the more colorful Grey Warden stories, but in his defense, relief is powerful and the edges of the darkness seem to have bled back just a little bit. He dreams again, about home and family and a wife with braids and a teasing grin, and he wakes in the early hours with a lingering sense of regret that he has to wake up at all.

Then comes Denerim. They seek, but don’t find, Brother Genitivi. And he turns down a little side street and feels a jolt of terrified anticipation when he finds the address in front of him.

Shale and Leliana are behind them, and they’re probably going to laugh at him later, but he doesn’t think about his companions. He wants a family. He wants to share the amazing things he’s seen and the hope that’s beginning to grow, ever so faintly, under his breastplate. He wants to meet the sister he’s never known, and he _has_ to save her from the Blight.

But Goldanna is …

She doesn’t …

She says … And then she calls him a …

_Your royal father forced himself on my mother_ _and took her away from me, and what do I got to show for it? Nothing._

_You killed_ _Mother, didn’t you, and I’ve had to scrape by all this time!_

He gives her money. It’s not as though they can spare much—she calls him a prince, and that’s insane, what kind of prince walks around in mismatched armor and probably smells like dog—why would she _say_ that? He didn’t ask for—he didn’t kill anyone—wait, of course has, but Darkspawn and bandits aren’t the same—surely she sees that—surely he can _explain—_ Andraste, help him, she has _children,_ he could help them, there’s a Blight hard on their heels and he can't—

Maker. Andraste. _Someone._ Please.

_Make it right._

No one does. The world turns ugly and it is all his fault, because he asked and because he doesn’t have the nerve to stand up to anyone or anything, even his own mind. Even his sad-eyed soft-smiling all-knotted-up lady knows it, and she says as much to him. Everyone is out for themselves, and he needs to learn it. She says it kindly, but she says it, and he says nothing as they trudge through the city gates.

The group spreads out across the camp that night. Shale goes to stare into the bushes and mutter to herself. Leliana slips away to tend to her nug, which is either fearless or stupid or both because it’s been planting itself five feet from a hungry mabari and refusing to budge … And Alistair sits and gazes into the fire and thinks about all the things that have gone wrong and all the ways he could have died, and he feels something twist inside of him as he understands that his only family will either die under the darkspawn or live hating him.

The thought is strangely familiar.

Maybe he prays. He doesn’t know. He wishes Duncan were there to give advice.

But then he looks deep into himself. As he sits there by the campfire, head down, heart aching, he finds a memory. He finds the little boy who hurled his mother’s amulet at the wall because he _would not be told what to do._ Who understood, with some bone-deep visceral fury, that someone was trying to force him to something for their own ends, and refused to be dutiful. A little boy who had been forced to sleep in the stables because the arl's wife hated him, who had been refused everything because everyone else _was_ out for themselves, and who broke the amulet because he knew it better than the man he would grow into. But Eamon found the amulet and put it back together, and his beautiful stray Cousland gave it to him again, because while people are worse than the man Alistair wants to believe, they are better than the boy Alistair ever knew.

People are flawed. The boy knew it. The man knows it. He accepts it. Something in his chest seems to click open, and he breathes out a long sigh and feels the heavy aching sorrow begin to bleed out of him.

It amuses him, somehow, that it’s taken him so long to remember what he knew when he was a child. He smiles wryly in the half-shadows and thinks about rage and strength and sadness and beauty as he watches the only other Grey Warden in Ferelden giving her fawning mabari a beef bone.

As the firelight begins to fade, he goes to her.

It’s the worst possible time for something like this. They’re in camp, and the camp is no longer safe at night; the Archdemon’s seen them in their dreams, and now they’ve got to post guards and sleep more lightly than ever. But the world’s changed, somehow, and if he doesn’t talk to her now he’s going to lose his damned mind.

Only a few words. They come smoothly, for once, and there is one single moment of fear before she puts her arms around him and leads him away from the camp.

A carpet of grass. Some trees and rocks. Water not far. There are no darkspawn near. It’s as close to perfect as they’ll find.

His hands shake, a little, as he helps her unbuckle her armor. Hers do not as she helps him with his. He draws his shirt over his head, and she shucks out of her gambeson to reveal thin sweat-dampened linen and the dark lines of her breastband beneath it. Those too, go, and she kneels there on the grass looking calmly up at him with nothing but the vial of the Warden’s Oath around her neck.

She can’t kneel in front of him. Not ever. The shaking’s stopped, and all he can do is reach out for her.

It’s new to her as well, and she hesitates a moment. Then she rises up, leaning into his kiss, and it takes all his Chantry training—and oh, Maker, sacrilege never felt so good—to keep his control. In the deep shadows,  the Oath gleaming against her skin and sleek hard muscles shivering under smooth flesh, she could be a lady of the forest herself.

Some part of him is still convinced that this is a dream, or that she’ll come to her senses and push him away. She doesn’t. She pulls him down, almost making him lose his balance, and can’t suppress a soft laugh as he throws out an arm to keep his full weight from falling on her.

“Sorry,” she mutters into the hollow of his throat, still trying not to laugh. She’s not sorry. He doesn’t care. Her stifled laughter reverberates in her chest, and he feels it there and blesses it, just a little. One more incredible thing in the middle of ruin.

They haven’t got the time, but he can’t help it: he wants this to last forever. He trails kisses down her neck, exploring every peak and hollow of the velvety flesh, tasting each scar. There are Maker-be-praised few truly ugly wounds, but the bindings of her heavy plate mail have left rough callused patches where they once rubbed her raw right through the gambeson. He runs a fingertip over them, memorizing the feel of the coarsened skin. Even if this night never comes again—and he may be an idiot, but he knows not to expect so much luck twice in one lifetime—he’ll have memories, and he wants to know every inch of her.

Without her armor, she’s surprisingly small. Not at all petite or delicate, but smaller than the larger-than-life one-woman slaughterhouse she seems in combat. He places a hand (carefully, part of him still certain he’s going to get punched) on her left breast, feeling the rapid-fire heartbeat hammering beneath the softness, and is surprised to discover his whole hand can cover it. The peak hardens underneath his touch, and he kisses that too, nipping at it and drawing a ragged breath from her.

Roughened fingers catch his trousers by the waist, pulling furiously at the fabric. Alistair tries to assist her, but his hands are clumsy and she pushes them away. “My turn,” she whispers into his ear.

If he explores, she conquers. She kisses him, hard and hot and desperate with need, and he runs his hand down the curve of her back and Maker preserve him, she breaks the kiss and whispers into his ear _exactly_ what she wants from him, and he thinks maybe he’s dead and in some beautiful afterlife right now because one slim hand is—

She lays back for him, and he braces himself and kisses her again, and her hand wraps around his cock and guides him into her.

_Maker’s. Breath._

It takes them a few moments to find their rhythm together, but when they do _,_ something clicks and Alistair can’t hold back a moan. Her fingers dig into his shoulders, demanding more— _don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop,_ her words run together into whispered pleas in his ear—but he knows that if he tries to go much faster it’ll end before it’s really begun, and oh, Maker, he wants those memories. So he moves slowly but surely, thrusting deep and withdrawing languidly, still exploring her peaks and valleys with one hand as she grows taut and trembling underneath him. 

Her head falls back, the chain of the Oath pooling in the hollow of her throat, and her breath comes in shallow gasps. She strains to pull him closer, to deepen the contact.

“Alistair,” she pants. “More. Harder. _Please.”_

The words send a mad thrill through him, and he knows that Chantry or not, he won’t last much longer. And his lady’s wish is his command.

She buries her face in the crook of his neck to stifle her moans as she comes. It’s too much: he spends himself, finally, and for a moment he thinks his words have come true and his head really has exploded because _oh, Maker help him,_ and they collapse together onto the grass with her fingers still digging into his back and her breath in his ear.

Maker’s breath.

He loves her.

They lie together for a time, her nestled into him, her back against his chest. He runs a hand through the loosening braids and prays a little, though he can’t quite seem to find the words. She catches the hand and plants an impulsive kiss on it, lips feather-light against an old burn scar.

To his surprise, he still hasn’t spoken. Normally, the problem should have been talking too much, but he’s struck dumb and couldn’t be happier about it. His whole body feels limp and exhausted, his thoughts are dazed, but he can’t remember feeling better. Every cell in his body seems to be doing the Remigold. The Archdemon himself could come crashing through the underbrush and he wouldn’t give a damn.

They wash in the spring and dress, moving slowly through the unfamiliar aches. She catches his eye and blushes a little, and he knows he’s wearing an enormous silly grin that matches hers. He feels strangely like he’s been caught out of school doing something he really oughtn’t. When he recalls the Chantry’s teachings to her, she stifles another laugh and kisses him before reluctantly returning to her own tent.

That night, he imagines a future again. He sees them traveling the length and breadth of Ferelden in the wake of the ended Blight, recruiting new Grey Wardens and seeing the country recover from its war. Easy enough to make coin to live; even if Weisshaupt won’t help them finance the rebuilding, they’ve spent more than enough time in the wilderness to know what’s useful to sell in towns. (She’s always veering off the road to grab a patch of elfroot.) Sleeping together under canvas, not having to wear armor all the time, traveling with her and seeing Ferelden at peace … It’s a good imagining. He likes it better than any of the others, even the one about being a real king’s son, because (Andraste, please) it might actually happen someday. Maybe. Perhaps. Sort of. Tentatively. Ish.

When he falls asleep, though, his real dreams are different. He sees a bastard child with her eyes and his face, sleeping in a stable. Orphans of war. His father—a vague construction from paintings and stories—forcing himself on a chambermaid, who makes the sound of a howling mabari when she tries to talk. Snippets of half-remembered conversations: _that poor boy, it’s not his fault. Well, that doesn’t make it any easier on us what has to look after him, is it?_ _Last thing we need’s a pretender to the throne. He won’t pretend nothing, he’s not a bright child. Migh_ _t make something of him if he can learn to keep his mouth shut. Yes,_ if _…_

Alistair wakes to shouts and the clash of metal on metal. Darkspawn are attacking the camp. He grabs his sword and shield—no time for armor—and dives into the fray, getting a couple of vicious slashes and a bruised shoulder for his trouble. The dreams slip his mind.

He doesn’t remember them until late into the next day’s travel. They’re slogging along a stretch of road towards Lake Calenhad, the whole group trying studiously to ignore Morrigan and Leliana’s bickering about religion, when a chance remark of Leliana’s brings the images rushing back.

A bastard. What if he’s made a horrible mistake? What if he’s gotten a child on her? One night is all it takes—he’s living proof of that. A bastard’s bastard. A _FitzAlistair._ Maker, it’d be a … a medical anomaly, for sure.

The thought is so bizarre that he can’t quite fit it into his head, but it follows him around and refuses to be ignored. He knows she’s quite an herbalist—an expert, perhaps—and that women are supposed to have, er, ways of managing … things? And of course, Grey Wardens aren’t renowned for their fertility …

He doesn’t say anything to her. She doesn’t bring it up. But she knows him better than anyone in the camp, and the next time she puts her arms around him and feels him hesitate, she sighs a little—not annoyed or defeated, just a soft exhalation of breath.

“Alistair,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure … I don’t think, I mean …” He looks down at her and tries to put it into words. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I don't want _you_ to get hurt.”

“If someone gets hurt, we’re doing it wrong.” He can’t hold back a small grin at the sudden spark of humor, but she seems to understand that more’s needed. She shakes her head and pokes him hard in the thigh. “Alistair. I know what I’m choosing to do.”

“I don’t,” he tells her.

She rests her head against his chest, and he winds one of the long braids through his fingers, like he’s playing cat’s cradle with a discarded string. Her hair is dyed a deep red by the last embers of sunset. The tents are up. There’s an occasional clank or curse from the far side of the camp as Zevran, who’s drawn the short straw and is cooking dinner tonight, struggles to fill the cooking pot from a very thin trickle of water running down the side of the nearest rockface. They’re alive, and she’s here, and he hasn’t yet been struck by lightning.

He’s trusted her so far. He can trust her to know her own mind—and her own dangers. She hasn’t led them wrong yet, has she? 

They’re alive. The Blight hasn’t won yet. They’re alive, and his knotted-up Cousland lady wants him to trust that she knows what she’s doing. He looks up at the sky and sends his imaginings packing–the beautiful and the dark both. He will never be a king’s son on a fine horse, and he will never be his father, and to his shock he is glad of both. The sunset is beautiful and Zevran’s cooking isn’t awful. He can trust that she knows what she’s doing, and that perhaps, the future will be good.

“All right,” he says. “Now I do. I think.”

She grins up at him. “Took you long enough.” And she leads him into her tent.


End file.
